Any piece of art, (or for the purpose of this post, just about anything), always, at its genesis, starts off raw, before being fine-tuned and chiselled to perfection (relative, I know). Over the course of my entire conscious life, I can recall only one exception to this rule. Let me, then, follow it, and present my thoughts and emotions in their rawest form, much like Farah Khan’s latest work, one that feels freshly ejected out of a stomach (upwards or downwards, don’t ask me how, don’t ask me whose).
The most common mistake, (grievously injurious, if not fatal) people would make is to deem it as one of those leave-your-brains at-home ones. They would pay for it dearly with their empty skulls, smashing them to bits, while their precious contents lay safely at home. Unaware readers would probably be shocked, thinking she has made something with at least an iota of sense. The only thing more shocking than that, is this hard, cold fact: her most recent offering is miles below her last work. Yes, everyone, she has managed to undercut her own abysmally low standard. Here is an ‘artist’ who, in that sense, has constantly reinvented and refined herself.
For this admirable feat she has her brother to thank. They seemed to have engaged in a game of one-‘up’manship that has produced several gems over the last few years. All of their work is a tribute to the Hindi cinema of the 80’s which they are desperate to recall back to life. One would think I’m doing her a service writing about her work, but believe me, I’m doing myself the greatest favour by purging myself of it.
Is Farah Khan biologically female? And, for that matter, is Shirish Kunder, biologically male? Normally, these questions are none of my business, but when such confusion and identity crises crop up in a piece of work where the former is credited as ‘director’ and the latter takes credit for ‘story’ and ‘dialogues’, and when this piece of work is thrust upon an unsuspecting audience, most of whom do not share the abovementioned couple’s homegrown bawdy sense of ‘humour’, my mind is hard pressed to ask them.
A trio of pansies frolic around in pink, fawning over the lead bimbette gazing longingly at her flawless beauty, simmering with barely-suppressed lust and jealousy at the same time. They are forever in heat, waiting to prey on just about anyone with a flat chest. The bimbette, on the other hand, played by an ‘actress’....... wait, more on her later.
Anyway, the bimbette is the most honest character here (helped greatly by a career-best performance). Just looking luscious and changing costumes by the dozen. Well, she happens to be a female too (not just biological, she’s a WOMAN) in case we had forgotten. Farah Khan devotes three songs and about ¼ the running time to show her in all her womanhood, with a super-toned figure and voluptuous hip-shake to boot. The bimbette curls up in heat for everyone other than her owner. Whereas the owner tries his best to keep her on tight leash, awkwardly covering her juicy limbs before everyone. Talk about women empowerment. Again, I wonder who is the woman among the two, Khan or Kunder? Indeed, they touch some really deep issues about gender and sexuality. It would have helped had these issues not been about themselves.
The male lead is, well, hard to lay a finger on. Mouthing filth, handling eye-candy all throughout, he does serve as every woman’s fantasy.........., or wait, was it a man’s wet dream? Or was it gay? Or was it that every man is gay? Or every woman is gay? Or every woman is a man? Or every man is bisexual? See what I’m talking about?
I think they tried their best to reach out to physically challenged people, primarily the deaf. Like Bhansali, who tries to reach the blind through blinding razzle-dazzle, they try to reach the deaf by raising hell with voices. All of them here scream till they are sure each and every member of the audience sees every vein, every nerve, every orifice, every pore screaming in tandem. Never mind if she deafens those cursed with a normal hearing, to death. We’ll wait for Farah to reach us in her next outing.
What transpires on screen is a mirror for real-life. What the male lead does to a bunch of naive villagers is what Farah and her partner Kunder do to us, the naive audience. And the entire episode of the headless horseman is thrown in.............. for what? To do an expose on child labour? Human trafficking? Drug-running? Kidnapping? To show that con-artists too have a heart? Or the dilemma of an unlikely hero? Or just to show us they are capable of paying a tribute to something as esoteric as ‘Sleepy Hollow’?
Probably the only thing Farah knows as a director is to do spoofs. If an entire lifetime in the industry, armed with unending passion for ‘masala’ movies (so they claim) yields something like this, or like some of her brother’s work, it spells nothing but doom for the Hindi film industry.
And what’s with the beeped-out piece of dialogue in the lead’s signature line that is repeated ad nauseam? This, when ribald cracks at the gay community abound? The Censors are really hand-in-glove-in-crotch/ cheek-by-jowl-by-pube with the makers.
Pardon me for being so scattered, but what, exactly, do we go into a movie for, paying through our orifices, as we do? Acting? Story? Drama? Dialogues? Good looking people? Camera-work, editing, set design, for sticklers? Good songs, at least? Exotic locations? Humour, if nothing else? If so, what do we make of this, devoid as it is, of any of the above? What do we enjoy? The sight of an overheated bimbette dancing suggestively in revealing dresses before a village full of half-naked, skeletal, hungry (in more ways than one) villagers, cruelly tempting them. Or Siamese twins sharing a trouser? Or a blind albino being slapped around, dressed as a Britisher in colonial India for a half-assed film? Honestly, I would have loved it had they shown her being devoured limb-by-limb by those villagers. Am I justified then, in refusing to deem this as a movie? What is it, then? From what I see, it is home-made X-rated material. Meant for an extremely select audience, meant to be kept within the family. Just between the couple at the heart of it. Probably an anniversary gift to each other. Meant for nights when they feel a little low. The other couple involved here, the male lead and his real-life wife, probably gift similar presents to each other every year, going by his regular work.
The last time the lead bimbette decided to act slutty onscreen she gave us ‘Boom’. That occurrence was historical in the way it systematically decimated the careers of almost all those associated with it and took a sizeable portion of viewers’ minds with it. Except for the bimbette and a certain superstar. As the Joker says, “what doesn’t kill you, only makes you stranger.” The bimbette has deigned to act slutty onscreen again. She has recreated the occurrence quite accurately.
It is a matter of grave and immediate concern for the basic intelligence of the human race that there exist beings on this planet carrying Farah Khan and Shirish Kunder’s genetic material and fully capable of transmitting it to others. But then again, unbelievable as it may seem, Farah Khan and Farhan Akhtar are first cousins. Maybe there is hope for the human race, after all.
